Suicide Hippies

Today, in lieu of anything really important to mention, I'm going to give a nod to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and its slogan "May we live long and die out". Bare with me, I'm going to try to do this seriously.

Philisophically, I suppose, there might be a certain attractiveness to what is essentially an extremely slow suicide pact of an entire species. What VHEM says is:

"In the end, the real “enemies” are human greed, ignorance, and oppression. We can achieve more by promoting generosity, awareness, and freedom than we can by vainly kicking at a buttless foe."

What I think is going on here, is there's some sort of ecological movement which has got the not unreasonable idea that we, as a species, are wrecking the planet. Then they've taken it a little bit further by advocating that we don't reproduce. I do have a certain amount of sympathy for that idea too. The prospect of anything sprouting from the loins of George Osbourne or Borris Johnson (or George Osbourne AND Borris Johnson) is totally hideous beyond comprehension. I imagine it would look something like what happens when a dog crossbreeds with a fascist, and then they both explode into a multilimbed extra-dimensional monster with far too many eyes, or Russel Brand*.

Cheap shots at politicans aside, the VHEM is something I don't really know how to approach. I guess, in a sad way, its funny. At its very worst, it seems to be a gross over-reaction by the ecology movement, and at its best it is some sort of peverse intellectual form of natural selection. I'd be interested to see population demiographs vs people who hold these views, just to do the maths. But I guess the best part of VHEM is that it is some sort of autonomous movement centered around a philosophical view and without and concrete numbers behind it. Which is handy really, because I'm pretty sure its growing slightly slower than the worlds population, which would make it an unreachable goal, but anyway. I suppose theoretically you could drag it out as long as you wanted.

I really don't know if I should laugh or cry. Fortunately enough, "VHEMT (No, I don't know what the T is for) is naturally in opposition to involuntary extinction of any species, as well as any efforts encouraging human extermination." So we don't have to worry about a bunch of pyschotic environmentalists running around with axes, chopping people down and turning them into pamplets, wearing their skin, eating the soft bits and grinding the hard bits into sweets. Which, since humans already do that, I guess, in the end looks bad on us as a species, I suppose.

And no, I'm not going all vegan or anything. I'm off home to eat some pink curly things with far too many legs and eyes on stalks. Because I hold a deep beleif that man is distinct from animals because we can use guns.

Anyway, tune in next time and remember not to breed.

*Because I hate him